Field
The present disclosure relates to optical communication equipment and, more specifically but not exclusively, to optical switches.
Description of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the disclosure. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
An optical cross-connect (OXC) switch is an optical device that is used, e.g., by telecommunications carriers, to switch optical signals in a fiber-optic network. A representative N×M OXC switch interconnects any of its N optical input ports to any of its M optical output ports in an optically transparent fashion. A wavelength-selective switch (WSS) is an OXC switch that operates on wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) signals without having to fully physically de-multiplex their constituent WDM components, e.g., into individual dedicated ports. A WSS can be used, for example, to implement a reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM). Currently, there is a high market demand for OXC switches, WSSs, and ROADMs that have one or more, and possibly all, of the following characteristics: (i) low production cost; (ii) small form factor; (iii) high port count; (iv) high switching speed; and (v) low insertion loss.